The Downside of a Snow Day

Tomorrow has been cancelled. Schools are closed on Tuesday due to the ice which has been slowly building up here for the past four days. It is currently snowing (lightly), and we appear to be out of the precipitation woods, but the powers that be seem to think that it will be just too dangerous tomorrow to have school. That is fine by me, except....

You know what Tuesday means to me. I'll miss my nuggets, for sure. With next week's Tuesday being an early release day, that means no love next week, either. I will endeavor to persevere, however. And Wednesday will just have to be an adequate day to start second semester.

It is nice, on some level, to me, the December 1 snow storm notwithstanding, to be visited, finally, by real winter weather. It is cold. As it should be. I don't know if global warming is a permanent thing. It seems clear to me that our habits of burning excessive amounts of carbon-based fuels, of clearing every tree in sight, of not regulating more stringently the emissions of manufacturers have had some negative effects on our climate. Yet, how are we to really tell if this current warm up is not just a natural trend that will, after some time, be it a decade or a thousand years, reverse itself? I guess we can't know for sure. One thing is clear. I truly miss winters that are as they once were advertised, with hard, extended freezes, when only the most fool-hardy (or just plain hardy) wore shirt sleeves and shorts to go out. Frisbee, dammit, is not a winter sport. Nor should it be.

So, a bit of ice and wind is actually a pleasant thing, for me. Frozen ponds and drifting snow. The loss of such things is the real tragedy of global warming. Even if their presence sometimes curtails our enjoyment of a chicken nugget here and there.

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By the way, I've been half-heartedly working on a children's book for my two nephews. Here's the first verse I wrote for it, "Turtles Belong Outside"(I need an illustrator). It somehow reminds me of something my grandmother used to sing to my brother and me as kids. Not this particular verse, but things like it. This, by the way, like all good literature, is based on actual events.

Turtles Belong Outside

Found a turtle outside
And I brought him indoors.

I showed him to Monkey;
he peed on the floor.

I showed him to Puppy;
He peed one more time.

I took him outside.
That's the end of my rhyme.